Quickly, he moved from room to room. He stopped at the door of one of the guest rooms. It was a smaller room with a single bed, a desk and a bookshelf, three large windows and a braided rag rug on the floor.

The rug was folded, as if someone had kicked it.

“Listen to me, Jana!”

He spoke with a harder tone; the softness was gone, the guise.

With determined steps, he went into the room and turned on the lamp. He stopped and shivered; it was colder in the room than it should be.

His gaze drifted over the bed, the table, the bookshelf. He took a step toward the windows, noting how the lamp was mirrored in the many panes. He listened and heard the sea. I shouldn’t hear it so clearly, he thought, at the same time as an icy wind blew over him. Then he understood that one of the windows was open.

He went out in the yard again, trudging through the snow to the back of the house. He stood a few yards from the open window and saw the tracks leading from it, saw the distance between them and knew that she had been running from the house. He ran after her.

Immediately after a pine tree near the cliffs, both the snow and the tracks stopped. He stood and looked out over his property.

On the right, under a roof and well-covered by a green tarp, his two motorboats were usually stored over the winter.

But now there was only one.

* * *

Anneli Lindgren walked quickly through the hall, faster with every step.

She approached Gunnar’s office, feeling how her hair tie was slipping and slowly releasing her ponytail.

His room was empty, so she continued to the conference room where the team had just broken up. The mood was tense.

She met Henrik, Mia and Per in the doorway and nodded toward Ola, who wore an anxious expression and was holding his cell phone to his ear. Gunnar stood farthest into the room, his eyes on the map. He didn’t look at her, but she was positive he had seen her come in.

She went straight across the room to him, stopped and tried to get him to look at her.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, panting, trying to catch her breath. She noticed they were now alone in the conference room.

“Stay away from me,” he said.

“I have to talk to you now,” she said. Her voice was serious and unfaltering, completely unlike the one he had last heard from her. She waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. Gunnar stood silently and looked at the map.

“I know that I’ve really messed up,” she said, “and I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me, but I...”

“I don’t want to hear your damn apology,” he said, turning around. “Where were you last night, then?”