‘Yeah, I just have to—’

She couldn’t be sure, of course. For that, she would need to take a sample and let Molander run an analysis. But it certainly looked like blood. If it came from the boy, the location of the stain suggested that they hadn’t left through the front door, but rather walked down the basement stairs, which is why she continued down the steps and realized Klippan’s silence was due to the fact that the call had cut out.

Just like the door to the recycling room, the basement door was ajar, and here too her mere presence was enough for the fluorescents to flicker to life.

Storage, a sign on the grey metal door on her left said. Electrical Service Room, read the one straight ahead. Both were closed and locked. To the right were two more doors, one of which was open.

On her way to it, she passed a board on which the residents could book laundry times by moving a personal lock around the available slots. Of course it was a laundry room, and judging from the sound, the machines were running.

The fluorescent lights turned on, and it was instantly clear to Lilja that the laundry room had the exact same layout as the one she and Hampus had had in Helsingborg before they moved to the house in Perstorp. Three washers in a row, a dryer, a drying cabinet and an old mangle no one used.

It was the furthest of the three washers that was running. It was significantly larger than the other two and would easily accommodate a large rug or three sets of bedclothes in one go. They’d had one just like it in Helsingborg and that in itself was a good reason to move back.

But she couldn’t see any bloodstains or other signs of the boy. So she went back out into the hallway and continued up the stairs after deciding to have another go at the door leading to the storage units. Both the boy’s parents and the lady next door should have keys to it.

But when she heard the washing machine rev up and start the spin cycle, she realized something wasn’t right, so she stopped and turned to the booking board. It was Wednesday the thirteenth of June, but there was no lock in any of the slots under the number thirteen.

In other words, no one had booked the laundry room that day.

4

The silences between the signals in his headset were so drawn out, it felt like someone had deliberately reprogrammed the tempo just to make him stressed. On his first try two minutes earlier, they had eventually been replaced by the much more frequent beeping of the busy signal. But not this time. This time the silences seemed endless, and Fabian had to pace back and forth in the hospital corridor outside Matilda’s room to stay calm.

‘Hi.’