Gertrud Molander’s girlfriends.

They were much rarer than workplace liaisons. But friends, both one’s own and one’s partner’s, were still a solid second when it came to affairs, and it went without saying that Molander might have found his lover among them.

Molander didn’t have a Facebook profile. According to him, social networks were the beginning of the end for humanity and a much greater threat than climate change. Fabian did have a profile but was never on it. And if he was, it was to read other people’s posts, never to write his own. But unless he was mistaken, Gertrud Molander had sent him a friend request a few months ago.

He got up and walked over to his computer, but before he could even type in the password, he realized where he’d seen the woman.

She’d been there all along, right in front of him, so close it hadn’t crossed his mind. The realization broke over him like an icy wave when he turned to his whiteboard and looked at the picture of her lying naked on a beach, entangled in seaweed, washed up like driftwood by the wind and waves. Her eyes were wide open and half-filled with sand, and one arm and one leg were still screwed to the wooden pallet.

The woman’s name was Inga Dahlberg, and she had been attacked on 24 August five years ago while out running in Ramlösa Brunn Park, then raped and sent down the Rå River with her arms and legs nailed to a wooden pallet. She had been washed ashore over twenty-four hours later on the island of Ven in the middle of Öresund, between Sweden and Denmark.

The method used had been similar to Danish serial rapist Benny Willumsen’s MO, and since everything had pointed to him having crossed the sound to the Swedish side, all the material had been incorporated into that case file.

But during the trial, which had dealt with a string of torture-like rape murders, Willumsen had eventually been declared not guilty on account of insufficient evidence in the so-called Ven Murder, which had remained unsolved.

But Hugo Elvin had secretly suspected Molander and when Fabian typed in Inga Dahlberg in the search bar and saw her address, he could see why.

Ingvar Molander had had an affair with his next-door neighbour.

That must have been what Gertrud’s father, Einar, had discovered. A discovery that had cost him his life.

37

Lilja looked at the number Igor Skanås had written in her notepad. He’d been right; the number had been listed in the phone book online under Assar Skanås’s name and address. It was just plain embarrassing that she hadn’t thought to check. Normally, that was part of the routine checks that were run as soon as a suspect was identified. A task that had fallen to her this time and that she had completely overlooked.