Söderköping. In Östergötland. Not so far from the E4 highway or the sea. Grens had visited that beautiful little town on the Göta Canal, first in connection with a triple homicide perpetrated by a young man who cut the throats of his best friends and didn’t have any friends anymore, and then on a later occasion for an interrogation of two elderly women who had been fighting over an even more elderly man, then decided to kill their mutual lover and blame each other instead. So this would be his third visit to that summer idyll.

Another coffee, and this time accompanied by a piece of apple cake with vanilla sauce—it was never too early for some things.

“Ewert?”

Ewert Grens turned around.

He hadn’t noticed the tall, athletic man opening the café door and slipping inside, until he got to Grens’s table.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Short dark hair, square face with a straight nose, and a chin that looked like it belonged to a superhero in a comic book. Erik Wilson. Head of the homicide unit, and therefore Grens’s boss. He’d once been a handler for the criminal infiltrators that the police publicly denied, but privately believed were indispensable. Until an operation went to hell and degenerated into a kidnapping in a high-security prison, and the police chief was forced out, and Wilson moved up. Strangely Grens found him easier to get along with now as a superior than when they were both detective superintendents—perhaps Ewert Grens had finally accepted there was a need for several versions of the truth in one police corridor.

“Sit down. There’s room.”

“Ewert, I didn’t come here to have a coffee.”

“Well, that’s what you do here.”

“The officer on duty woke me up forty-five minutes ago. Someone found a dead man in a staircase on Brännkyrka Street.”

Grens poured even more vanilla sauce over the small plate where his apple cake already seemed to be drowning.

“I don’t have time.”

“Ewert—I want you to take over.”

“Sorry, in the middle of another investigation. You want some apple cake?”

Erik Wilson shook his head. He’d been standing up, but now he pulled out a chair and sat down across from Grens.

“What investigation?”

“Breaking and entering. Landed on my desk yesterday.”

“And since when, Ewert, do we prioritize a break-in over a possible murder?”

“Since break-ins started being connected to four murders that might possibly become a fifth. Since crimes started being committed inside the police station. I’m headed to Söderköping in a couple hours, and hopefully I can explain more when I get back.”