‘No, thank you.’ Fabian sat down on one of the sofas, which was so deep it was downright impossible to sit upright.

‘Severe dehydration.’ Flätan picked up the thermos on the table and poured tea into one of the paper-thin cups until surface tension was the only thing keeping it from overflowing. ‘The cause of death. Wasn’t that what you were after?’ He stepped up on to the other sofa and sank down into lotus position without spilling so much as a drop.

‘Dehydration?’

Flätan nodded and sipped his tea. ‘She’d probably been running a high fever beforehand, had the sweats, not to mention violent vomiting and diarrhoea.’

‘So in other words, she was sick.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘So if I’m understanding you right, there were no signs of wrongdoing?’

‘Oh, she was murdered, all right.’ Flätan drank his tea. ‘Remember Georgi Markov? You know, the Bulgarian defector who was murdered in 1978 on Waterloo Bridge in London?’

‘Wasn’t he poisoned with ricin?’

‘Exactly, and Molly Wessman got more or less the same treatment. Except without the James Bond umbrella with a poison pellet in its tip. No, in this case, whoever did it kept it simple and just injected the poison with a syringe.’

The fit young man, who was now wearing an apron, returned with a briefcase, which he handed to Flätan before returning to the house.

‘And when was this done to her?’

‘Hard to say exactly. But probably twenty-four to thirty-six hours before she died.’ Flätan opened his briefcase and pulled out a file. ‘So, sometime Friday.’

The picture of Molly Wessman on her phone had been taken in the early hours of Wednesday, clearly a perfect opportunity to poison her. Instead, the perpetrator had, for unknown reasons, waited another two days.

‘This is the pinprick.’ Flätan handed him a close-up of Molly Wessman’s right buttock, where a small red bump was visible.

‘It must have hurt,’ Fabian said. ‘I mean, shouldn’t she have reacted and gone to A&E as soon as she got sick?’

‘That’s assuming she was aware of what had happened to her. That someone had pricked her with a syringe. But if she was outside at the time, she might just as easily have figured it was a bee sting or some such. Then, when she fell ill, she didn’t see the connection to the needle prick. Probably just thought she had the stomach flu or food poisoning, and nearer the end, she was too weak to get out of her flat.’ Flätan drank the last of his tea and put the cup down. ‘Are we done here?’

Fabian nodded and stood up. ‘Thank you. I can show myself out.’ He would probably have been welcome to exit through the house, but something told him there were things in there he shouldn’t see, so he turned back towards the garage.