She stopped and sat on the floor in her bedroom, panting, with her arms around her knees.

She had to find him. Had to find where he was holding his drug mules captive.

She looked at her hands and thought back through her conversation with Pim. She pondered the strange light Pim had talked about that looked like a spotlight that reached far in between the trees.

She would begin searching along the coast, and knew a place where she could start that was near Highway 209, heading toward Arkösund.

Her parents’ summerhouse.

She gathered the necessities from the bathroom and brought them into the bedroom. She folded a few changes of clothes, clean underwear and socks, and stuffed it all into a backpack.

Then she took the knife and weighed it in her hand before placing it against the small of her back. She picked up the backpack and laid it on the floor in the hallway.

The last thing she did was to take one last look around her apartment. She had the feeling that she wasn’t going to return to it for a while.

Then she closed the door, went quickly down the stairs and left Knäppingsborg without looking back.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

PER ÅSTRÖM TURNED OFF his electric shaver and listened. Yes, that was the doorbell ringing. He put the shaver back on its charger and left the bathroom. In seven long strides, he was in the foyer. The doorbell rang again. Henrik Levin stood in the stairwell, a large rip in his jacket.

“I know it’s early,” Henrik said, “but I knew I had the best chance of catching you here at this time.”

“What’s this about?” Per asked.

“You know Jana Berzelius, right?”

“Yes, of course I know her,” Per said, fidgeting.

“How well do you know her?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Do you know her as a colleague or as a friend?”

“Colleague.”

“Your neck is flushed.”

“What is this? Some sort of interrogation?” Per asked.

“No. But people usually flush around the neck when they’re self-conscious. Or their eyes dart around. You’re doing both. So I’ll ask again. How well do you know her—as a colleague or as a friend?”

Per looked both ways in the stairwell.

“Come in,” he said, showing Henrik into the apartment and gesturing toward the sofa. “Please, have a seat.”

But Henrik went past the sofa and stood by the floor-to-ceiling window.

“What a view,” he said.

“Yes, I always know exactly what’s going on outside the nightclub down there.”

Per nodded toward the street corner below at Sankt Persgatan and smiled.

Henrik met his cheerful gaze but looked serious.