Gunnar laid his hand on her shoulder, and she felt the warmth from his damp skin. He gently caressed her neck, under her hair, over her right shoulder. She felt the shoulder strap of her nightgown slip off. When he then tried to caress her breast, she carefully pushed his hand away.

“What’s wrong? What were you thinking about?” he asked.

“About you. And us,” she said, leaving the window. “We have to get going. We can’t be late to this meeting.”

She opened the closet and grabbed the first shirt she touched. She just wanted to get out of the bedroom without him seeing the blush on her cheeks.

The blush of shame.

* * *

Jana Berzelius entered the conference room on the third floor of the police station in Norrköping. She sat at the oval table and glanced furtively at the team that was already seated there. Anneli Lindgren was taking down important details about the dead woman from the train; Mia Bolander was drawing ten pointy flowers in the margin of her notes. Ola Söderström was adjusting the screen of his laptop. Gunnar Öhrn was sitting with his hands folded on the table.

“Ah, so you also had to show up?” Mia said without raising her eyes.

“Yes,” Jana said, her head held high and her back straight. Her jacket was black, her skirt was knee-length and her hair was stick straight.

“But don’t you prosecutors usually wait until we’ve done the heavy lifting? Or at least until we have a suspect?”

“Not all do,” Jana said.

Henrik gave Mia a tired look, as if he wanted to tell her to skip the bullshit. She knew very well that preliminary investigations were led by the prosecutor if the victim was under eighteen years old.

“And not all come rushing into the initial briefing,” Mia continued.

“No,” Jana said. “But that’s how it is to be devoted to your work.”

“Thanks, I know what that means,” Mia said, glaring at her.

“Well, then,” Henrik said, tossing the autopsy report on the table, thus beginning his report on the preliminary examination that Björn Ahlmann had performed on the dead woman from the train.

“So you’re saying she had swallowed fifty capsules of heroin and cocaine,” Gunnar summarized when Henrik was done. Standing, he continued, “One capsule had begun to leak, and she died of an overdose. We’re dealing with an obvious case of narcotics smuggling, right, Ola?”

“Yes,” Ola said, opening the screen of his laptop. “The woman was a ‘bodypacker,’ a person who transports illegal narcotics within her own body. A courier, drug mule, pack mule...”

“Pack mule?” Mia repeated. “‘Bodypacker’ sounds more accurate.”

“I agree,” said Ola. “And that’s one typical name. But despite the fact that drug mules are a well-known problem, it’s hard to catch them. Every year, between sixty and seventy million people cross the Swedish border.”