Maybe there was a technical error. Maybe she’d changed providers. There could be any number of reasons why the number wasn’t working. But this was Dunja, and if he knew her right, it was a very deliberate choice.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Theodor
Hi Dunja.
It seems you have a new number. Please call me so we can talk about it over the phone instead. I assume it’s you. If not, please tell me who you are and why you are contacting me regarding my son.
Kind regards,
Fabian Risk

He sent the email and had an almost instantaneous reply.

Final-Recipient: [email protected]

Action: failed

Status: 5.1.1

Remote-MTA: dns; gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

(2a00:1450:4010:c0d::1b, the server for the domain gmail.com.)

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550-5.1.1 The email account you tried to reach does not exist. Try double-checking the recipient’s email address for typos or unnecessary spaces.

Fabian didn’t know what to think. Her number didn’t work and she sent cryptic emails from an address you couldn’t reply to. What was she up to?

He picked up his phone, found Kim Sleizner’s mobile number and was about to dial it when a window suddenly popped up in the middle of his computer screen.

Recovery of 8GB Sandisk memory card completed.

Do you want to view the files?

Right. The pictures on the memory card. That’s what he’d been doing. He clicked YES, which opened a new window.

A window full of pictures.

He double-clicked the first one, which showed Flora Stenson waving to the camera from her vegetable patch. It was taken on 13 September 2005. Two years before Einar Stenson died. The next picture was a selfie taken only six minutes later, standing on a jetty by Ringsjö Lake. The next picture showed two steaks on the grill alongside jacket potatoes wrapped in aluminium foil and topped with big dollops of Béarnaise sauce.

For a professional photographer, the pictures were surprisingly mediocre. The small digital device clearly hadn’t been Einar’s forte, and given that there were only about twenty pictures, he had likely grown tired of it quickly and stuck it in the attic.

The rest of the pictures were private, too, and from Fabian’s perspective completely uninteresting. Most looked to be from Christmas 2005, and even though he had only been to Molander’s house three or four times, he felt he recognized the beige sofa and the rectangular dinner table set for a Christmas feast. Molander and his wife, Gertrud, were in some of the pictures; she was wearing a red skirt, he a button-down shirt and a lambswool jumper.