‘Hi, Matilda. How are you feeling?’ one of the nurses said with a warm smile.

Matilda looked at them without speaking.

‘Matilda, you’re awake.’ Fabian pushed his way to the bed and took her hand. ‘You’re back. Do you understand? You survived.’ He turned to one of the nurses. ‘Right? She’s going to be fine, isn’t she?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said, to the nodded agreement of the other two. ‘All her stats look good.’

‘Did you hear that, Matilda? Everything looks good.’ He stroked her cheek, but she turned her face away. ‘Matilda, what’s the matter? Didn’t you hear? You’re going to be all right.’

Matilda shook her head and looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.

3

Police detective Irene Lilja could still feel her nether regions throbbing when she pulled on her helmet, straddled her newly serviced Ducati and roared away over the speed bumps of the suburban street. The make-up sex was the only reason she hadn’t left Hampus a long time ago. He was never more passionate and fiery, while at the same time tender and thoughtful, as after a fight.

But they fought too often. Whatever the subject, an argument was always simmering just beneath the surface. It made no difference that they were generally on the same page deep down; they always ended up each other’s polar opposites, though this particular fight had been about something she’d been mulling over for some time.

It wasn’t that Hampus was an alcoholic, but he had definitely dialled up his weekend drinking and those bloody cans of lager were well on their way to becoming a natural extension of his right arm whenever he wasn’t at work.

It went without saying that her bringing it up had triggered him instantly and, before long, she had been seeing red too. But it was only after she started emptying beer cans into the sink, one by one, that he had let his true colours show.

He had never hit her, but last night, for the first time, she had been afraid. The rage in his eyes when she had defied him and opened yet another can had made her give serious thought to leaving him once and for all.

The phone call had come just as she passed Kvidinge on her way to the Helsingborg police station. She had been looking forward to ten uninterrupted minutes with the wind and the Ducati as her only company. But when an eleven-year-old Syrian boy in Bjuv turned out to have disappeared without a trace on his way to school, she had no choice.

If only it had been a Swedish boy instead, she thought to herself as she passed a Prius that was insisting on staying just below the speed limit. Then she could have let the uniforms deal with it, certain the boy was simply cutting class to smoke cigarettes behind the bushes with a friend.