One thing was clear, however. If Theodor didn’t see the light and agree to turn himself in, there was nothing he could do about it. It didn’t matter that he was right, or that he, too, risked being charged with crimes if it ever came out that he’d known about his son’s involvement. Until he and Sonja agreed, all he could do was wait.

That troubled him; he could only hope she would eventually come to her senses.

His worry about that had, however, been replaced with a different one the moment Molander entered the conference room and sat down diagonally across from him. When they’d spoken on the phone the day before, he’d been almost certain his colleague didn’t know anything. Since then, Gertrud had had plenty of time to fill him in.

During the meeting, he had tried to analyse every detail of his colleague’s behaviour, but had, in the end, concluded that his only option was to visit Gertrud as soon as possible to try to suss out if she’d brought it up.

That aside, the morning meeting had been unusually efficient. None of them had had the time or peace of mind to enjoy the first get-together of the week or make small talk. Lilja had for some reason spent most of the time staring at her phone, and both Molander and Klippan had, with the help of Tuvesson’s expert direction, been surprisingly succinct and focused, which was why they’d reached the last point on the agenda after just twenty-five minutes and were now waiting for Klippan to connect his laptop and show them clips from the ICA Maxi CCTV tapes.

Lilja had already told them about how her search for Assar Skanås’s turned-off phone had led her to a building on Carl Krooks Gata, and that the only thing of interest she’d found there was a one-bed flat for rent. After a short discussion, they’d agreed not to divert resources to door-knocking in the area. But they would make sure to maintain around-the-clock readiness to act if the phone became active.

Molander had also, with the aid of the network provider, secured the call lists for the past week to and from the number in question. They’d shown that Skanås had called Björn Richter, the man with the dolls who lived in the same building as Moonif Ganem, several times. He had even tried to call him at 7.18 a.m. on the morning of the murder.

One theory was that Skanås had travelled to Bjuv to visit the man with the dolls, and when he was not in, he’d lingered in the stairwell until Moonif came down with his recycling. Either way, it was clear the two knew each other, which was why Tuvesson had immediately dispatched two uniformed officers to search Richter’s flat.