Mariana Hermansson was wearing thin plastic gloves while handing him a thick black leather wallet. Grens wondered how she and Sven Sundkvist could already be at the crime scene when he arrived. Hermansson lived in the inner city, but it was still early and Sven would have had to drive at least twenty minutes. Erik Wilson must have called them immediately after receiving the alarm—already confident he’d be able to convince his unruly detective to take over. Ewert Grens couldn’t decide if he thought that was a good or bad thing.

“Well, we can certainly rule out robbery.”

Hermansson unfolded the bulky wallet and fished out a driver’s license from a plastic pouch on one side and a hefty stack of bills from the compartment on the other side, five hundred kronor banknotes mixed with fifty-euro bills and a few hundred-dollar bills as well.

“Real.”

She slid a thumb over the license’s plastic surface, over the raised image of Sweden, over the UV.

“His ID is real, anyway. I’m not sure about the cash, the technicians will have to determine that.”

She turned the license over so Grens could get a better look at the front. The face on the floor wasn’t exactly whole, unlike the one in the photograph, still it was obvious they were the same person. Gray and somewhat unkempt hair, an upper lip that was significantly wider than the lower, a steely, closely clipped mustache, and on one cheek three liver spots, which formed a small triangle and gave the impression of a pair of eyes above a mouth—a face within a face.

“Dejan Pejović. Forty-seven years old. Guessing from his name and appearance, I’d say he was from the Balkans. If he’s got a police record we’ll be able to get everything to you in an hour.”

Grens didn’t answer her. Preoccupied. He was trying to figure out what felt so familiar.

“Ewert? What is it?”

“I think . . . the name. I’ve seen it before.”

“You’ve seen it? Where?”

“In the same red-flagged file you gave me. He was questioned in connection with the original crime, part of the suspect’s circle. So, Hermansson—he is definitely in our records.”

Grens used the dead man’s shoulder for support as he stood up and stretched out his knee, waiting for that throbbing pain to lessen. The stairwell had been blocked off with blue-and-white police tape, and Krantz and Errfors, the forensic technician and the medical examiner respectively, had arrived with their black tool bags. One deceased person who gave so many living people their jobs. This was the moment they were all waiting for; without the consequences of violence, none of them would have a purpose. The meaning of death as a condition for the meaninglessness of life.

“Number three hundred and ten.”

Ewert Grens looked at the dead man, who recently was as alive as he and Mariana were right now.