“I’m not investigating her.”

“No? You’re here asking a bunch of questions.”

“I’m just trying to get some confirmation.”

“That she could be a suspect?”

“No, exactly the opposite.”

“Now I don’t understand at all.”

“Confidentially...” Henrik said.

“Yes?”

“...this is always my starting point when it comes to Jana Berzelius. She’s my colleague, too, and I think she’s an excellent prosecutor.”

“Great,” Per said, “then we agree on that. But that you’re here,” he continued, “feels...”

“Uncomfortable?”

“If it gets out that we’ve had this conversation...”

“No one knows that I’m here,” Henrik said.

“But you know that this doesn’t look good?”

“Absolutely.”

* * *

She had awoken to the sound of a door closing but remained lying in the fetal position under the warm comforter.

She had tried to avoid him all night long. He’d done the same. They had lain on their respective sides of the bed with their backs to one another. Both wide-awake, without breaking the silence.

Now Anneli Lindgren got out of the bed and looked out the window at the snow drifting down from the ash-gray sky. She saw the thick white carpet that covered the road, the tracks from a cat that had traipsed diagonally across the street, the drifts that had formed by the mailboxes.

A shiver made her skin break into goose bumps all over her body. The apartment felt cold, as if the windows had been opened to air it out.

She went to Adam’s room and saw him still sleeping, mouth open, and knew she should wake him up. But she decided to let him sleep a little bit more.

The floor creaked loudly under her bare feet.

Just when she reached her hand out to open the bathroom door, she heard Adam’s alarm go off on his cell phone, how he shifted under the comforter to turn it off. Then it was silent again.

She turned on the light and stepped into the shower. She showered quickly under the warm water, letting the water rinse her body clean. She was thinking of yesterday, of Anders.

Stepping out of the shower, she wrapped a towel around herself and opened the door to the cabinet. She reached her hand in behind the towels, but didn’t feel the bag with her underwear in it.

She stuck her hand in again, feeling back and forth, pulling all of the towels out onto the floor and shaking them.

Still no bag.

She felt an icy sensation creeping up her spine and heard a strange moaning sound escape from her throat.

She froze when she heard a faint knocking on the door.

“Mom?”

* * *

Threatening, steel-gray clouds loomed over Norrköping. Henrik Levin looked up at them before entering the police station. He quietly greeted Gunnar Öhrn, who sat at his desk with a troubled look on his face.