Besides, the dashboard showed an outside temperature of just twelve degrees, which meant she had to turn the heat on in her seat and wrap herself in a thick blanket to stay warm. Something that in turn meant she had to start the engine every fifteen minutes and let it run for at least three.

She lost a fight to suppress a yawn at the exact moment the blue numbers on the dashboard changed to 00:00. She had two more hours before Klippan was coming back to relieve her, and unless something happened pretty soon, she was going to fall asleep and drift so far away a Third World War could start without her noticing.

She stepped out of her car, stretched and filled her lungs with the damp night air. They had agreed not to enter the house alone. Partly to leave it as untouched as possible for Molander, but also in case Skanås did come home. Then they would be at a significant disadvantage. Skanås had proven himself to be very dangerous and completely unpredictable, and in the house he would also have home court advantage.

But the house was one thing, the garden something else entirely. When she was well inside it, she stopped and looked around. At the Volvo sitting there, only partially covered by the tarp, and at the lawn, which she’d only just noticed was freshly mowed, much like the flowerbeds were completely devoid of weeds.

Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on what; and then her phone started playing ‘Sommartid’ by Magnus Uggla. Which meant it wasn’t Klippan calling. That would have elicited the old Bakelite ringtone. No, this ringtone was one of her absolute favourite songs and especially chosen just for Hampus. A relic of a time when she’d been so head over heels in love, her whole body had ached.

It was his third attempt at calling her that night. He was probably wondering where she was and why she didn’t pick up. Nothing weird about that. But just as she couldn’t stand the rest of Magnus Uggla’s terrible mainstream discography, she couldn’t bear the thought that she was living with a Sweden Democrat.

So she let the call go to voicemail and continued around to the back of the house, to the back door that led into the living room. It was still ajar, as it had been when they first got there.

Everything pointed to Skanås having spotted them through a window and fled through this very door. But where had he gone after that? And the Renault, his own car, where was that? As far as she could see, there was nowhere to park it in the back and nowhere to drive off to. There wasn’t even a road, just fields.