With ten men, they could have positioned themselves along the edge of the area and moved in towards the middle in a coordinated fashion. Now, they had no choice but to try to encircle him by covering one cardinal direction each, which left vast areas completely unmonitored, making it easy to slip through the net. In fact, that had already happened twice, and if nothing changed soon, they would have to abort the mission and wait until after the weekend, when they would have more manpower.

Once something did change, she assumed the app she was using to receive information from Molander was acting up or had frozen somehow, so she shut it down and restarted it. But it made no difference. The marked area on the map still looked wrong.

Round like a tennis ball and, compared to before, tiny.

So tiny it only covered about twenty thousand square feet.

And if that wasn’t enough, she was only a few hundred yards from the centre of the area. If the map was correct, that had to mean he had suddenly come into contact with several masts at once, which also meant he could disappear again at any moment.

Looks like you’re heading right for him, Klippan texted. We’ll be there as soon as we can.

She got up, took out her gun, shoved two extra magazines into her back pockets and hurried off. Back out in the sunshine, she crossed the path and continued across a small clearing with dried-up branches and roots that did their best to ensnare her feet and sprain her ankles. But she managed to avoid any disasters and was soon entering the woods on the other side.

She gave her phone another glance as she passed a large boulder; the area on the map was still small and their paths would soon cross, unless he suddenly changed direction.

She stayed absolutely still, but couldn’t hear anything other than the flies buzzing around her sweaty neck. Maybe he’d already heard her and stopped, too.

At length, she left her hiding place behind the rock, looked around and pushed on deeper into the trees, whose foliage dappled the sunlight. At first, she jogged on light feet, jumping over the mossy rocks and fallen trees, but after a while, she slowed down to a walk, almost a crawl, checking her location on her phone from time to time.

After a while, the trees began to thin out and the forest opened up into a clearing where the sunlight was so strong it took her eyes a moment to get used to it. But as soon as they had, it became clear they were not out here chasing a shadow.