Ola disappeared from the doorway and came immediately back with his laptop, which he placed on the table. He cast a glance at his computer screen and then stood right behind Henrik, searching the map.

“According to the fishermen, it was here,” he said, indicating a point in the Arkösund archipelago. “Why?”

“The girl had been in the water for about a day. It’s not likely that in one day she would have floated all the way out here from land,” Henrik said, showing the large distance between the sea and land.

“No, that’d require gusts of hurricane-force winds,” Ola said.

“So she must have been dumped at sea.”

Henrik pointed again.

“Look,” he said. “Pim was found walking on Highway 209, near Brytsbo, and there’s coastline both north and south of there.”

“Yes, and we’ve already searched through the whole northern coast. Marviken, Viddviken, Jonsberg, everywhere.”

“But,” Henrik said, “the drowned girl was found here.” He moved his finger down, to the southern area of the map. “What’s in the middle?”

Ola took a step forward.

“Kälebo,” he said. “Right on the water.”

“Exactly,” Henrik said. “Pim said that the room she was in was near the water, and if the woman who drowned was dumped at sea, she must have been dumped from a boat. We have a meeting in an hour. Before that, I want you to list everything along this strip of coast in Kälebo—summerhouses, storage sheds, boathouses, everything—because I think both the room and the boat are right there.”

* * *

The car door shut almost soundlessly. Jana Berzelius froze, listening, but only heard silence.

Even though it was snowing heavily, the snowflakes didn’t reach her where she stood in the dense spruce forest. She took a step forward and felt that the ground was soft. The driveway up to the house was long and wound around two curves.

The map wasn’t correct. The cottage was indeed close to the water, but not right on it. It had two windows, a wide chimney and a narrow door. Around the ash tree in front wrapped a circular wooden bench that was altogether too big for the narrow trunk. The bench was clearly used during the summer for when people wanted to escape the hot sun, she thought, looking at the thick blanket of snow that now lay on the bench under the tree’s cold, straggly branches.

She stopped ten feet from the old oak front door. She watched it, listening again. No one had shoveled around the doorsill, and there were neither footprints nor tire tracks in the snow.

She went around the house, peering in the windows and confirming that the cottage was deserted. She turned her gaze toward the cliffs and went quickly down toward the sea, searching for a boathouse but finding only a little outhouse that she didn’t bother to look into.