Mia turned her back to Henrik and began walking with determined steps toward the exit. She heard Henrik’s cell phone ring and noticed the stunned tone in his routinely short sentences. She stopped, turned and looked at him.

“More work,” he said, pale as a sheet, when he’d hung up.

“What is it?”

“More bodies. Unfortunately, I think we’ve found the third girl.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE SNOW LAY completely untouched around the house and reached all the way to the windowsills.

Jana Berzelius felt around under the flowerpot, fished out the long, narrow key, inserted it into the wooden door and opened it.

It opened with a small creak.

It was a large, manor-like structure with a yellow façade and white trim. Wide stone steps led up to the white double door. The house was far from any neighbors and majestically placed right by the sea, near Grunsöströmmen. The area was full of summer cottages and the occasional year-round home. It was nearly five hundred feet to the nearest neighbor, and they weren’t home. Almost one thousand feet to the cottage beyond that. From here, then, she could work undisturbed in her search for Danilo.

She stepped in and let the door close behind her, listening carefully as she stood in the dark foyer.

She took a few steps into the drawing room and saw the armchair with its back toward the balcony. She thought about how he always sat there, every summer, with the newspaper in his hand. That was how he’d been when she was young, at least.

A memory flickered past, came back and insisted on her attention. It had been her first summer in the house. She’d been nine years old and had sat behind the armchair with her back against the brown leather, sitting back-to-back with her father, listening in secret to the adults talking. Her father had gotten a visit from an unfamiliar friend, and her mother had been running errands in town.

She had had to pee, so terribly that she could hardly hold it. She’d been just about to get up when she’d heard her father becoming upset.

“She’s got to go,” he said.

“That won’t work. You know that.”

“If I’d only known...”

“You don’t like surprises?”

“Not like this.”

“You were the one who said yes.”

“Did I have any choice?”

“You know very well that this was the only solution.”

Her father fell silent.

“How long does she have to stay?”

“Ask your wife. I’m positive she would be very disappointed if she didn’t get to keep her beloved daughter.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Daughter? Yes, that’s how I think of her. You should, too. You should get used to it.”

“Never.”

It was silent for a moment. Her father shifted in the chair, the leather creaking under him.